For years, property owners have waged a battle with structural degradation caused by weathering, erosion, poor repair, and settlement. Detection of these problems has proven to be problematic. Many different kinds of services have been employed by owners and managers of structures to understand, evaluate and rectify structural defects.
One conventional approach is to videotape a structure, looking for problems to rectify. While videotaping structures using both visual and infrared spectra is helpful and informative, the conventional, ground-level processes used for capturing the infrared and visual spectrum images are insufficient because of their poor attained resolution. According to one conventional method, ground based video capture equipment is used which, when viewing an entire tall building, either has severe perspective problems or, as used from a remote vantage point to take an image of an entire elevation, has insufficient resolution to identify the location and nature of discovered defects.
These conventional building exterior inspection methods have been less than successful in identifying problem areas. An ideal identification and recordation system would be able to identify problem areas of any structure. These problem areas may result from water leakage, air infiltration, heat and cold loss, vinyl shrinkage around windows, voids in caulking, deterioration of metal, weathering of exterior stone and mortar joints, corrosion due to air pollution, fissures in brick and stone, and even saturation of stone materials by water.